Dance with the Devil
by NitroStation
Summary: Before the war, Elita One was a member of Cybertron's prestigious Art caste. Her first assignment takes her to Kaon's infamous gladiator pits, where a faceless mech stole her spark.
1. Chapter 1

_This is intended as a companion fic to Promise, but it's not necessary to read that first in order to understand this. _

_I decided to write this when an interesting plot point came up in planning Promise, but I was unsure if I'd be able to wedge it into the main story. So, I decided to make it into its own fic (and also because I wanted to explore into Elita One's background before she bonded with Optimus). It is set before the war, specifically during the Golden Age, and like with Promise I'm taking a few elements from the IDW comics (namely Ratbat's character and the state of Cybertron before the war). Some other things though are of my own imagining._

_The main timeline is also that of Transformers Prime, so the Soundwave in this fic will be following his design in that show._

**xx**

Unit Seven Zero One. Right there in those slat straight letters and hooked curves of numbers, Ariel saw her designation on the event list. She hadn't seen those numbers in a long time, only once when she was placed into her Academy set. But she'd heard them often enough; bellowed through vocalisers, whispered in strained audios and once she imagined that a medic drone would have recited it at her birth. And from that, she supposed it meant something. 'One' was a special number if you were a femme. What it signified was a curious little mystery that Cybertron's best bio-analysists still hadn't cracked; the phenomena of femmes rarely being born on their own. They were always with a brother or two, one spark split into several and one of them just so happening to be female. Something to do with CNA and base code duplication and mutation... Ariel never really paid much mind to the lessons during her time in the Academy. Not that there was any _point,_ after she received her 'worker' role. Her _function_.

She didn't know a lot about what _exactly _the whole 'Functionist' movement around Cybertron was, but she knew enough from her place within it to safely make the assumption that it sucked more than a cleaning drone's vacuum nozzles.

But nowadays she didn't have much time to complain about it. Not when her processor was being picked apart, vocaliser endlessly tweaked and oiled, her circuits and wires flexed onto the verge of snapping from the torsion she forced on them every day.

The joys of life in the Iacon art caste.

Ariel wasn't the only one who suffered, of course. They all did. Even now she saw a poor Mini-Con femme being carried off down a dim corridor with dimmer optics, legs twisted and vocaliser shaking the air with wails. If she survived the first night in what shackles they all called 'the med-bay' then the supervisors wouldn't _let _her live for long afterwards. A femme without legs wasn't much use other than as a frag-

"Elita! Get your aft in gear, you're gonna be late!"

Right, she kept forgetting. She wasn't Ariel any more. She was Elita One. And her shoulders were about to come out of their sockets if Chromia shook them any harder.

"You know how pissed Beta gets when we miss our cues!" the blue femme said as she dragged Elita past sallow groups of other femmes gathered under flickering lights, half-heartedly flashing over their immaculate armour and holsters hidden beneath skirt plating. A mech marched past here and there as well, but they weren't in any better state.

"Well _maybe _if she didn't expect us to clean up in less than a breem, she wouldn't blow out her vocaliser every day," Elita muttered just loud enough to make Chromia smirk. "What's this mech's name again, anyway?"

"Primus, you'd forget your own if I wasn't yelling it in your face every day," Chromia huffed in irritation as they stopped before a wide set of doors, but her frown gave way to another smirk half-way through. "Starscream_. Senator _Starscream. One of the big ones, I heard, in charge of Vos affairs-"

"Is that the Seeker city?"

"Frag if I know," she shrugged. "He's next in line to be something called 'Winglord', so I guess that translates into 'Seeker piece of slag'." Elita's mouth and eyeridges furrowed into frowns.

"Come on, 'Mia, just because he has wings-"

"Means that he'll already think he's better than you 'cause you can't flap away from him." Her olfactories wrinkled and her servos crossed over her chest. "And anyway, he's a _Senator._ You know how tricky they are to deal with. They can get away with a hell lot more than other mechs can. So _now _you gotta remember-" Again she seized Elita by the shoulders, and started reciting the honoured code of all courtesans. "When he takes your hand, keep your other on your blaster holster, don't piss him off, don't let him take you away from crowds or down 'shortcuts'-" She punctuated it with air quotes. "- and _never _go back to his hab suite. Got it?"

"I've heard it enough times from Beta, I'm sure it's all but _engraved _on my processor," Elita said with a scowl, rolling her shoulder joints back into place.

"I just want you to be careful, 'Lita," Chromia went on. "The first job's always the hardest. And that armour sure as hell ain't hiding your shivers."

"I am _not _shiver-" Elita stopped herself when the blue femme reached for a pink servo and brought it up, letting it shake and quiver in her grip. She looked at it as if it was rusting before her optics.

"Just a... motor glitch," Elita muttered, pulling her incriminating servo away and rubbing at her wrist. Chromia made a skeptical noise, just as her friend remembered one crucial detail.

"Wait a minute, Mia... if we're going out of the city, what if he wants to see my... alt mode?" Chromia had the grace to let her faceplate soften with a small sympathetic smile.

"I wouldn't worry 'bout that, Elita. Mechs like him hardly bother with letting their _legs _walk, let alone using their modes to get anywhere. You'll be fine. But good luck anyway. And keep your audios sharp, I want a lot of gossip when you get back!"

'**If** _I get back, you mean...'_

Just then the doors slid open, and chaos erupted in femmes trying to get through and keeping their armour pristine at the same time. Elita felt a final farewell _thud _on her back before she was carried out the doors by a tide of frantic femmes, her spark in her mouth and threatening to roll off her glossa if she opened it.


	2. Chapter 2

When Elita saw Vos for herself, it was hard to contain her awe. The gasp that came from her vocaliser was full to the brim with it. "Beautiful..."

"Yes, yes, I know I am, dearie," Starscream drawled as he inspected his claws, one set fanned out before him with the other tapping at a waist joint. Elita fought off the urge to roll her optics while he was so close- she didn't like how sharp those claws looked.

"But we can't spend _too _long admiring the scenery, they'll be expecting me," Starscream sighed as he briefly brushed down his armour and held out a servo, waiting for Elita to twine her own around it. When they walked her heels clacked frantically on the ground as she tried to keep pace with him.

"Now, don't you worry about all the other mechs there, sweetspark. You just need to stand near me and look pretty, and we'll _both_ survive the evening."

_'As if it's going to be any easy being next to _you._' _Elita knew she had to guard her glossa and remember her Praxian Ps and Qs, but she took the liberty to scowl at the back of her escort's helm whenever he was looking elsewhere. He didn't seem to notice all the curious optics he was attracting as he strutted down Vos' Citadel plaza, wings casting an iron shadow on the steel streets. Elita wondered if they were more interested in him or his _accessory._

But even with her less-than-desirable company, the city's beauty stilled her ventilations until she felt her systems starting to overheat. Air peppered with the sharp taste of aerogon bursting through combustion chambers, the distant roar and nearer hum of jet-model engines shoving themselves through the artificial air.

Vos was one of those strange cities with atmosphere generators at each end, pumping out lab-created clouds and draping a clean white sky overhead to give some semblance of boundaries to the Seekers. Elita remembered when Beta had been telling her about the different cities during her training- when Seekers broke past the atmosphere barrier, they were about to exit Cybertron's gravitational pull and the safety it offered them. Making a re-descent onto the planet outside of the barrier was notoriously dangerous and caused the deaths of no small number of Seekers, so it was essential to have so that flying bots didn't have to rely on guesswork to know if they'd gone too far up.

Looking over at Starscream though, she doubted if he'd ever even used those wings in his life, other than for showing off. He'd had them deployed and spread when he met her outside of the Iacon Cyberos chambers, waiting beside two drone mechs who'd barely glanced at her when their lord bent to kiss her hand. Something like a shudder fizzled in her wires at the lingering feeling of his lipplates there, but her plastered smile seemed courteous enough for him.

"Where are we going this fine evening, my lord?" He glanced over at Elita when she asked, and offered one of many contemptuous smiles that he thought looked charming.

"My presence has been requested at a gladiator pit in Kaon." He grimaced when he said the infamous city's name, as if he could taste the fumes of energon processing even now, but he managed to flip his frown to accompany his vocaliser's purr. "No doubt the other Senators will be relieved to see such a pretty face to distract them from the follies of _low caste _mechs." Something happened to his faceplate then, like he had just bitten into a sour energon treat and was swallowing the hard shards.

"I would be honoured to grace their presence as I am yours, Senator." Considering she wasn't honoured in the slightest, she was quite proud of herself for sneaking that slight past him. His amused huff cast a shadow over the smug giggles she was trying to suppress.

"Seeing as you lack flight, we'll take my private shuttle to Kaon." As if on cue Elita saw the plush interior of it waiting for them just up ahead on top of the docking platform; soft, deep red to match Starscream's helm crest and armour accents. The door was held open by another drone in white, who only nodded when Starscream climbed in first. Elita let out a small sigh of relief at Chromia's prediction being correct, and prepared herself for more idle nattering with the Senator throughout the journey. But, for all he said she might have been nothing more than a dust speck on the window.

She saw a few as she stared out of it, across the central layers of Cybertron as the low buildings of Vos fell away behind them to reveal the towering spires of Tyrest, blocking out the sunlight and momentarily shrouding the shuttle cabin in darkness every time it passed at the foot of one. Elita tried to guess which city came after Tyrest- Tarn? Nova Cronum?- but all she saw of it was tiny glimpses through slit windows in a dark passage that the shuttle flew through.

"You can never be too careful with transport when it comes to the lower cities, my dear," Starscream replied to her unspoken question. "All sorts of bots will pelt your cabin with hard energon clusters and pipes, anything they can get their hands on. Crashing one is like a _game_ to them." His olfactories scrunched up in derision.

Elita lost track of time in the shadows of the cabin, but her joints were stiff by the time it finally slowed and docked at what she assumed was Kaon. The door opened, and her first taste of the city was bitter on her glossa as refinery smoke poured in. She tried not to cough as she took Starscream's hand to pull herself out, grateful for a chance to stretch her legs.

Below the platform was a dark wasteland, completely foreign to her. The metal-grille sidewalks looked as if they were caked in oil, but they didn't shine. Lamps burned feebly at junctions and along dirt-encrusted streets, though most had their bulbs cracked and burst with sparking filaments. The buildings were tall and fat, streaked with blue and purple lights and topped with cruel-looking points. But what struck her most was the lifelessness of Kaon's streets. There was no-one on the roads she could see or standing on the walkways, and her wary footsteps echoed loud through the emptiness.

"Where is everyone?"

"In the mines, most likely, or already at the gladiator arenas," Starscream said, brushing gathering dirt particles off his legs. "Believe it or not, dear, but this is one of the _nicer _districts of Kaon. Anywhere else and we would already have been held at gunpoint for our credits by now."

Elita tried to share his shudder of horror, but she couldn't help but think that even a mugger couldn't have made her more uneasy than the barren streets themselves.


	3. Chapter 3

With Starscream leading, Elita made her way through the underbelly of Cybertron. They were barely more than three layers deep, but the sky was absent; shouldered out of sight by a tangle of highways and bleak starscrapers, foundations rotted away with rust. They might as well have been in the Underworld for all the weight she felt on her shoulders.

She couldn't see anyone else on the streets, aside from the usual abandoned drone crouched in the alleyways, but no doubt any residents of Kaon would be down in the mines or snatching recharge in the dark. It was only when they arrived at the arenas the city was so infamous for that she saw anything resembling life.

Outside the squat, bloated, unassuming buildings where life and death was so trivial, low and high caste alike clung to the walls like cysts. They were easy to differentiate; the low were all dirt-streaked miners awaiting their turn to die, while the nobles stayed are far as possible from them and kept a close optic on their subspaces. One of them, another Seeker in blue armour and shining white accents, glared impatiently at Starscream as he approached, marching up to him with wings twitching in irritation.

"About time you showed up, brother." Starscream flinched back at the Seeker's accusatory tone. He quickly recovered with a shrug and smirk.

"I'm here, aren't I, Thundercracker? If it was Skywarp, you would have been waiting another _hour _only for him to scare the oil out of you by appearing right behind you."

The mech apparently called Thundercracker only rolled his optics at that. "Whatever. Ratbat is expecting us inside." He barely glanced at Elita as Starscream looped his servo through hers, and she was pulled into the stifling darkness of the gladiator arenas.

The bitter scent of charred metal, oil and unprocessed energon hit her olfactories like stale high-grade, and she had to choke back a cough as her sensors tried to stabilise themselves. Her optics adjusted to the gloom, revealing to her a wide corridor; floored with rusted tin and packed to the walls with waiting spectators. She suspected the gladiators would be in their own areas, preparing for the next event.

Elita kept her helm down, focusing her audios on the voices of her escorts.

"I don't see why _I_ have to be the social broker for all _your_ political bids, Starscream." Thundercracker was still complaining, and she wouldn't have blamed him if he had a mech like Starscream for a trine brother. "I haven't even set ped inside the Iacon Council Chamber, yet I _still _seem toknow more about your job than you do."

"Will you keep your voice down?!" Starscream hissed, tugging Elita closer to him. She saw Thundercracker flash a smirk of his own that confirmed the two mechs were related.

"What, scared that your date will know you have as much experience in politics as an Insecticon does? I doubt she's even listening, you know what _Praxus _femmes are like." She made sure her optics were suitably dazed and distant to keep that illusion up, and was satisfied when Starscream gave an amused huff of a laugh.

"Oh, don't be so jealous that I can _afford _one on a Senator's salary. Anyway, this is no ordinary meeting, not even with an ordinary _bot. _I swear to Primus, Proteus must have been hungover on high-grade when he decided to let a fragging _techno-organic _into the Senate..."

"You know it's just to get the rest of them to shut up about being 'respected'. Ratbat is hardly one of the infamous ones anyway. I doubt he's even heard of High-Brid or anything else his kind dabbles in."

"Hmph. As long as I can wash my servo after shaking his. You don't think he'll want to touch the femme, do you? I'd _loathe _having to clean her as well..."

"Just don't bring her back to the apartment, else Skywarp will be begging for a turn; washed or not."

She may not have known what a 'techno-organic' was, but at least that confirmed she'd be leaving long before anyone had a chance to take her anywhere.

Starscream paused, bringing her shuffling to a jolting stop. She glanced forward again, seeing another mech greeting the Seekers with the most genuine smile Elita had seen all day, and the strangest armour she'd seen in her entire life. The metal was purple, but not painted or chromed, and there was a crest made from an alien furry substance around his neck. She'd seen it before on the berths of the most popular courtesan femmes and used for formal dress armour, but it seemed to be a literal _part _of him rather than a decoration. The shining chevron on his chestplate marked him as a Senator, though Elita had never heard of one named 'Ratbat' before.

To her surprise, he also greeted her with an outstretched servo, orange fur adorning the wrists as well. Her shock stalled her ingrained courtesy training, but when it eventually kicked in she knew to smile back and shake politely. His digits were tipped with talons that could easily have pierced her armour, but his grip was strangely gentle. Her digits flexed nervously when he let go, and she caught sight of a disgusted look on Starscream's faceplate that he managed to wipe off just before his fellow Senator saw.

"You never mentioned bringing guests along, Starscream." His voice was a low whine that rattled on the frequency range of her audios, but otherwise it was pleasant to listen to.

Starscream waved a servo dismissively. "The femme is just a Praxian escort for additional company. No-one you need to bother with."

Ratbat scoffed. "That attitude is the reason you have to turn to escorts for _any_ company." Starscream only had a moment to look outraged before the Senator curtly turned away and walked onwards towards a circular opening in the grand hallway wall. He clenched his digits hard and pulled Elita along into low-ceiling darkness- she could feel it scraping lightly along her helm crest and blocking out all sight save for the biolights and optics of her escorts. She gulped in a breath of stale rusty air as they rounded a corner with light shining at the end. That was where the fighting pits themselves lay, and where she would be stuck for the next several breems surrounded by Seekers.

Though on the outside the arenas were modest, the energon-soaked pits within were well known for dropping as far down as Cybertron's very core. It made Elita wonder if any energon dripped down onto Primus down there, if he knew about his children being killed for sport so near above him.


	4. Chapter 4

Though it was still a breem before the battle was scheduled to begin, the arena was already full of mechs and femmes alike; tiers of seats and platforms towering into the copper sky above and circling the enormous pit that they paid to see energon shed within. Starscream and Ratbat did not have to concern themselves with tickets or waiting in lines, they had reserved seats at the very front of the rim. Thundercracker did not have Senator status, so he had to remain behind. Elita found herself going dizzy the longer she stared over the railing down into the gloom below, and had to sit back in her seat before she collapsed (though it _was _tempting her, anything to get away from the Seeker).

"So, which barbarians will be regaling us today?" Starscream asked, looking as if he was seated at a Tyrest Accord reading party rather than the front row for a bloodsport, optic lids struggling to stay up.

"I hear Megatronus will be doing battle-" Ratbat began, cut off by a scoff from the Seeker.

"Oh, _please. _I've heard enough about _him_ to last me a decacycle," he bemoaned, furiously wiping stray flakes of rust from above off his pristine armour. "We'll get five klicks of actual entertainment and then a pretentious speech that lasts twenty. If I want to be bored out of my processor, I'll watch my paintjob dry."

"Well, luckily for you we won't be seeing him this evening," Ratbat said with a mock sympathy. "The programme specified the first round would be Blackout vs Soundwave-"

"Never heard of them."

"-and we can leave after one of them kills each other, or at least maims. As long as the low-castes see us making use of our privileged seating, we not need give any mind to their so-called pit heroes."

Elita tuned her audios out from their conversation, feeling her inner energon churning uncomfortably at their words. Instead she focused on the arena around her; seeing parties of bots clutching betting tickets in her servos. A youngspark tried to climb over one of the railings of the higher tiers, but his carrier managed to pull him away and keep him glued close to her chestplates. Looking down at the pit itself, keeping herself far from the edge, Elita saw a patchy floor with rust stains spilt like brown energon and pale puddles reflecting a hive of optics from above. Two giant circles were at either end of the pit, where the gladiators would emerge from to pounding cheers and cries for the only thing they had to give- their sparks.

Like most bots outside the Kaon states, Elita never seen a gladiator in the metal. All she had for reference was stories told by Chromia late at night or whispers between the protégé femmes about mighty mechs who fought for glory, or to impress a femme they were secretly courting. Those were the misunderstood 'pit heroes' that so many swooned over. She wasn't so naive as to believe some gladiator would blow her a kiss from across the arena, but then again she wasn't sure what to expect at all- a hulking behemoth with more armour than his weight can carry and weaponry sprouting from his shoulders?

"I presume this is your first gladiator viewing?" Elita jumped at the sudden sound of Ratbat's voice, and she stalled again before giving a small nod. The Senator smiled again at her.

"I can imagine many mechs would be honoured to have you on their servos, though hopefully at more pleasant events than this one." She couldn't help but return his smile at that, despite Chromia's voice screaming in her processor – '_Don't get distracted, don't get charmed, don't let them see you falling for them!'_ But she certainly wasn't going to find desirable company with Starscream, so she dutifully told the voice to stuff a sparkplug in it.

"Why do you attend battles then, if they're unpleasant?" Elita asked, keeping her voice low but with a certain quality of innocence in its tone.

"Oh, it's all about public image, being seen by the lower castes rather than remaining cooped inside some council tower. I'm sure you heard what I said to Starscream." Her optics widened as she was about to protest ignorance, but Ratbat only kept his smile and lowered his helm to her audio. "It helps if you keep your optics away from who you're eavesdropping on, dear. A tip for the future." Her optics remained wide as he winked at her and pulled away again.

Techno-organics _were _a strange bunch, but Elita found that she didn't mind that.

"You said it was two mechs battling today. Do any femmes become gladiators?" She could tell they were mechs from their name prefixes-'Out' and 'Wave' were fairly popular ones, and she'd yet to meet a femme with either.

"Oh, more than you'd think." Ratbat seemed pleased with her questioning, from the twinkle in his optics. "They have separate events from mech fighters, though, too much difference in frame mass to make for a fair battle. Although there _was _one femme by the name of Strika- Solus Prime had gifted her with a frame to rival that of heavy duty construction mechs." Ratbat rearranged himself into a more comfortable position on his seat. "She destroyed the femme gladiator ranks and demanded to be allowed to battle mechs. 'Other femmes were too soft for her', she had said. So, those smart bots in charge of the arenas- mostly the trainers and bet collectors- said that if she won against a mech of their choosing, she could fight whoever she wished. Their champion was Lugnut, just about the same size as Strika. Mere klicks after the starting bell rang and they had shaken their servos, she'd torn his off and flung it to the other side of the pit. He passed out from energon loss while trying to reach for it."

Elita didn't notice how enraptured she looked as he told the story. "So... Strika won?"  
"Indeed. And when he regained consciousness, Lugnut asked her to be his bondmate while he was still waiting for his servo to be reattached," Ratbat revealed with an expression of pure bemusement. "They've been living together in Kolkular ever since."

Across their seats Starscream hissed a '_shush' _as the open sky overhead began to disappear behind a large plate sliding over the ceiling. Darkness and silence rippled through the audience, and everything was suddenly very cold. Elita kept her shiver hidden and helm low as a lone figure walked to the centre of the pit.

When plasma flames started to dimly burn in sconces around the arena walls, their light revealed the figure as a slight mech of orange and yellow armour. He said nothing to the crowd that weighed their gaze upon him, keeping his muted optics on a datapad in his hands.

"One of the pit organisers," Ratbat whispered to Elita. "I recognise this one as Kaon- not very imaginative with their names, but you can't blame them when their charges keeping naming themselves after the same ancient deities all the time."

As Elita considered the Senator's words, the polar circle entrances lifted to allow the gladiators into the pit.


	5. Chapter 5

The sudden uproar of the audience almost made her jump from her seat, and she had to let her spark recover before allowing herself to look down. Both gladiators were mechs, as Ratbat said, and more menacing than anything she'd ever seen- even from a distance she felt the aura of hatred they exuded.

One was of grey and black armour, which dripped of ill omens and thick paint fumes. Both colours were regarded as at best unpleasant and at worst repulsive. Grey was the colour of dead sparks and optics, bare steel and uncertainty. Black was a void of darkness, the chitin of Insecticons and other organic monstrosities. From the mech's grinning mouth, sharpened denta flashed and gnashed together as he stepped forward on bizarre peds that elevated him from the ground. A row of blades draped down his back and scraped together as if they were excited.

Ratbat pointed him out as Blackout, having to raise his whisper to be heard over the crowd. "A nasty piece of business, that one is."

His competitor was no less menacing. The armour was chiefly blue, with purple biolights running up his slim protoform waist. Elita thought it unusual he would leave it exposed, without even a layer of proto-protection, but she couldn't help but think it made for a very appealing look. At least, she did until she saw his faceplate.

Or, more accurately, his lack of one.

A sheer visor was all that could be seen of his face, crowned with a helm of sharp angles and points. He reflected her own optics when she looked at him, so she couldn't let her gaze linger without feeling unease crawling its way up her backstrut. He must have been Soundwave.

They both stopped before Kaon at the center of the pit, peds spaced and hands clenched into fists at their sides. Kaon looked down again at his datapad, before clipping it at his waist and nodding to each of the gladiators. At his motion they approached each other and stretched a servo out to shake their hands, as if this was nothing more than a friendly meeting.

Kaon took a many few steps back, flattening himself against the wall. The two mechs kept their hands together, neither looking away until finally a bell rang hollow through the arena, and in an optic blink they had knife-points held at each other's necks. In another Blackout had swept underneath Soundwave's servo and pressed his ped into his back, kicking him forward with a terrifying force that made him sprawl on the ground.

Elita thought if she blinked again Soundwave would have a puddle of energon beneath him and a sword sticking from his back, but as Blackout approached he swung a leg up to collide with his side and knock him off balance. A guttural roar sounded the black mech's frustration, and he barely dodged a hard cut from Soundwave's servo by rolling aside.

In just those few klicks, Elita gathered that Blackout was at a severe disadvantage- he was much bulkier than his opponent, and his movements were slow and clumsy. He had raw strength, but it would more likely be his death than his savior.

Soundwave, by comparison...

She didn't need Ratbat to tell her his movements were beautiful. Every arch and sweep and spin on his peds looked effortless, vain and purely elegant. Every motion melted into each other like water, and was just as dangerous to metal. He was liquid, almost dancing around Blackout. Even the most skilled performer of Praxus would have been hard-pressed to match his majesty. Elita couldn't track his individual movements, instead contenting herself with watching the blur of blue and purple armour. Energon was speckled on the dark plating, but there was far more trickling from Blackout's pierced protoform. He was stumbling under his own weight, unable to react fast enough to Soundwave's slices. Slender digits suddenly grabbed two of the long rotors on his back, pulling on them both and completely immobilising him. His servos flailed wildly as he tried to break from Soundwave's grip, as if he was a sparkling on a leash.

The entire arena had gone silent, allowing Blackout's pathetic wails to echo off every wall and helm. He screeched as the rotors tore from his back, flipped in Soundwave's hands and then both plunged through his chassis, emerging from the other side in a cyan fountain. The steel blades gleamed with energon and reflected the fading light in Blackout's optics; only when they had fully extinguished did Soundwave release him, watching emotionless as his rival pitched forward.

Then the arena exploded.

Kaon marched out again in the midst of applause and cheers, ticking something on his datapad. The victor did not so much as glance upwards at his roaring appraisal, only moving to wipe the excess energon from his servos. It was impossible to tell if his optics were at all glancing up- or if he had optics. Even as he was marched out of the pit, leaving Blackout's corpse to the rally of carrion crows gathered around, the applause still thundered on into the night.

"Gladiators never cease to amaze me with how _resourceful_ they can be," Ratbat commented in an amused way, barely paying mind to the body below him. Starscream only yawned.

"And gladiators never cease to amaze _me _with their _stupidity." _He spat in the direction of Blackout. "Serves him right, carrying blades on his back like that.

Ratbat shrugged. "I'm sure many a pit fighter could find a way to pry your wings off and bludgeon you to death with them." Elita had to hide a laugh at Starscream's appalled expression, though she was certain the other Senator heard it.

"And you ask why I don't _enjoy _these carnal sports," the Seeker growled, rising from his seat and shoving his way down the aisle. He paused only to tap Elita's shoulder, motioning for her to follow him. Her legs were still shaking from seeing murder so close to her, and she almost tripped in her haste to exit the pit. The stench of oil under that of internal energon and burnt metal clawed at her olfactories; her throat burned and she felt as if she was going to purge as she stumbled into what little fresh air the dim entrance hall had to offer. Starscream was blind to her discomfort, tapping at the side of his helm and speaking into his comm unit, but Ratbat raised an eyeridge at her as he stepped out.

"I see the arenas are no source of joy to you either, dear," he commented in sincere sympathy, pulling a small packet of something from his subspace. Elita looked at it as she bent over, ventilating heavily.

"What... is that?"

"Energel," he explained, slicing the wrapper open with a claw and peeling it aside to reveal a sticky mass of pink cubes. "You've never tried it? It's a common delicacy among the mid-level castes, and I'm rather fond of the taste. It should help settle your systems."

She wondered if any of his fur would be stuck to them, but she pushed that rude thought to the back of her processor. Hesitantly she took the wrapper in one hand and pushed herself upright, picking a cube up between two digits and popping it in her mouth. A sweet taste instantly spread over her glossa as the cube melted into a smooth gum. She chewed it curiously, savoring the syrupy texture before swallowing. A few klicks passed, and all ill feeling evaporated. Astonishment and relief showed on her faceplate, which made Ratbat pleased.

"Feel free to keep the rest, I have more than enough for myself. And I'm sure chewing it will keep undesirable mechs away from your mouth," he said quietly with a pointed look towards Starscream as the Seeker yelled into his unit. Elita saw no danger in letting her laughter free this time, though the gum in her denta hampered her jaw movements somewhat.

"You know a lot about the gladiators; don't you, Senator?" she asked when her glossa had wiped all candy traces from her mouth. Ratbat nodded with a hint of pride.

"Truth be told, I played a part in managing the arena before I became involved in the Senate. The rosters have changed since those days, of course, but I know enough about the majority of current gladiators to speak of them."

Elita took a moment to think before offering her question. "The mech that won tonight... Soundwave. Why does he keep his faceplate hidden?" Ratbat only had a shrug to offer in reply.

"Gimmicks are a common thing among gladiators. It gives something for the audience to identify them by. Soundwave, however... "He glanced away, as if uncomfortable. "I remember he was a newcomer before I left the arenas, now he's one of the most successful gladiators in all the ranks. Allegedly he was born into the pits, child of some other grand gladiator who styled himself after Liege Maximo. But past that, he is a mystery." He glanced at Elita. "This mech has piqued some interest in you?"

"Just... how he fought. It was lovely, despite... well, you know." She didn't want to have to grab for another Energel cube so soon after her first by mentioning it. Ratbat nodded in understanding.

"Yes, he has a rather rare style of fighting. I can't quite remember the name, but if I recall correctly it is notoriously difficult to master. It relies on power focused to the peds and legs, and complete concentration." He looked her over curiously. "Not unlike how Art caste femmes are taught to dance, am I correct?"

Elita's optics widened more. "Y-yes, that's... very similar." Her interest in this Soundwave was growing with each passing klick; every new piece of information branching off in a desire to know more.

Ratbat flashed one of those strange looks of his at her again. "Well, I believe I've taken up enough of your time this evening... oh, Primus forgive me, I never asked for your name."

"Elita One." It made her happy to say it, to hear it from her own glossa in her own audios.

"I hope we might meet again in the future, Elita One," Ratbat said with a low bow. "I'm sure Starscream will not be so anxious over bidding farewell to me, though I wish you luck in putting up with him for the rest of the evening." He turned on his heel with a parting smirk, leaving Elita with a screaming Seeker and her thoughts boiling over in her brain module.


	6. Chapter 6

_A quick note on this chapter- I've taken a lot of liberties with Soundwave's character. Since he's not a part of the Decepticons yet I imagine as a gladiator he had some personality other than 'silent and creepy'. This will also be the last one for a few days (or longer), as the previous ones were all typed up before the first chapter was uploaded._

**xx**

Elita didn't realise she had been staring after the Senator until a set of Seeker claws landed on her shoulder, squeezing it uncomfortably. "About time he left," Starscream growled through gritted denta, whirling her around with his servo draped over her. "Now we can finally get to the _real _entertainment of the evening." His smile was slimier than all the Energel on Cybertron, and it was hard to hide the shiver that passed through her backstrut.

"Actually, I..." Elita started to pat her hands around her waist, as if rummaging through her subspace. She made her optics wide in apparent shock. "I think I left something at my seat. Would you mind if I-"

Starscream was rolling his optics before she even asked, and sighed deeply as his smile dropped. "Fine, fine. Just be quick about it."

She smiled up at him, as if gratefully, and unwound herself from his grip. Even back in the darkness of the second corridor she could feel the Senator's optics burning on her back; relief only came when she turned the corner and saw the light of the arena again. She paused at the opening of the corridor, leaning against the wall. From what she could see there were less bots in the audience this time, and the pit had been cleared of Blackout's corpse. His stench still lingered though, and she had to chew another cube to steady herself.

Elita just needed a moment away from Starscream or anyone else... and this was as much privacy as she could achieve for now. She'd have to return to him; she wasn't so naive to think otherwise. And she knew exactly what he'd be expecting from her when they were alone.

Safe to say, she was nervous.

Of course it was illegal for a bot to be hired for interface, as if it was a service, but the gladiator pits were 'illegal' as well. And even if the laws were enforced, there were always loopholes. Her whole job description was a giant loophole- it entailed that she spent evenings hanging on the servos of mechs who desired company. That was what they paid for; the interface was just an unmentioned extra.

She'd never interfaced before, and the stories from other femmes of their first times did nothing to calm her. She needed reassurance... somewhere to think, something to distract her. Coolant was making her hands slippery as she wrung them together, and her optics burned in their sockets. She winced, blinking them rapidly to disperse the pain and clear away the sparks in her vision.

As one of them faded though, it pointed her towards a darker part of the corridor wall. There was another branch to the passageway, leading to only Primus knew where.

She prayed that Primus was on her side as she darted down it, keeping her servos stiff by her sides and trying to look like she wasn't about to be completely lost. The passage went straight on into a wide, dim chamber lined with iron doors and small sconces holding fires that pooled light on the walls. Elita would have admired the effect of their light more if not for the shadows that flickered on the walls as well ahead of her. Something told her this was no place for simple pit patrons, and going back the way she came would only send her right back to Starscream.

Relief filled her when the door she dived against was unlocked, but it was short lived. The room had a similar low light to the main chamber, but it only emphasised the light of the two red optics freezing her in place.

They held her own in a vice, causing her to neglect recognising the blue of his armour and the visor left on the table behind him, insignificant compared to the sword sitting on its surface. Red was reflected in its dull glimmer, and cyan stains still soiled the steel. The face containing the optics was a sheer grey plate, seamless save for the scar that his scowl made.

Elita's vocaliser felt like rust as it tried to form words. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was in here."

Soundwave didn't move his glare. He didn't move at all. Most bots would have taken that opportunity to leave and count Primus' blessings on them, but Elita was rooted to the ground. And it was from more than simple fear... this was the mech who awed her during battle. He was such a mystery that even the arena masters knew so little about him... and now she was standing right before him. She couldn't just leave yet.

"I'm trying to avoid someone, you see. Well, a lot of bots... I saw you fighting, in the pit," she admitted, rubbing her hands fiercely behind her back. "It was... it was beautiful. Like dancing." She struggled greatly to keep her optics in line with his own; as they flicked around the room they noticed the slim digits on the handle of the sword that had spilt Blackout's energon.

All that came from her mouth were raw hums and dry coughs. She had nothing more to say, and her faceplate was burning like Darkmount's lava pools. She managed a mutter of "excuse me" before turning back towards the door. Her hand froze on the handle as a baritone snarl whipped into her audios.

"You call it dancing... I call it survival."

When she turned back towards him, the red optics watched her like a wary predator. He still gripped the handle of his sword, but she tried to keep her gaze off of it. Her spark was hammering in ... excitement? Terror? She was in no place to give it a name.

"Where did you learn it, i-if you don't mind me asking?"

He let out a grunt that grated harsh against her audios, almost making her flinch away. "Survival is not_ learned,_ harlot-"

"What did you just call me?!"Offence littered her tone, and she did little to hide it with her optics narrowed and hands tightening together.

A slim eyeridge rose at her outburst, and Soundwave abandoned the grip on his sword to slowly approach her.

"Pardon me, I assumed you were an _Praxian _femme." He spoke as if every word was acid on his glossa. "As it happens, I saw you as well. You sat with Senators while they practically stripped you with their optics." He stated it as a fact.

"How dare you-!" Elita stopped herself before her voice went any louder, loath to attract any more trouble from outside. "I am no more a part of Praxus than _you _are of Translucentica Heights." Her remark only caused a glimmer of a smirk to spread on his lips, filled more with spite than humour.

"Your glossa is clever, I will give you that. Though I'm sure it is common practice for you to learn how to work your mouth properly-"

"I've half a processor to slap that smirk right off your faceplate." She felt as if she only had half a vocaliser from how her threat wobbled. Soundwave didn't make the effort to show his indifference to it physically.

"You wouldn't, harlot. I could kill you without even moving my peds." Elita couldn't stop a cautious glance downwards and a nervous vent of air.

"You can't kill me," she stated. "Not even a gladiator can get away with murder outside of the official battles. "

"That law exists, but there is also one against femmes selling themselves into the berths of mechs rich enough to afford them." He paused to glaze a look over her frame. "Obviously it is not enforced very effectively."

"And why do you assume I'm some sort of pleasure femme?" Her hands went to her hips, lips pursed in a frown. Gladiator or not, she was not about to let a mech insult her honour so callously.

"I can tell from your optics," Soundwave revealed, taking a long step closer to her and staring down into them. Elita leaned back on her peds, but she was unable to completely pull away from him. "They always have blue ones." His servo rose and a digit stroked near her cheek, not touching the metal, but regardless she could feel some sort of contact between them. Everything about her felt singed, set aflame and starting to burn inside of her. His voice only fanned the flames. "Bright enough to blind anyone who looks at them-"

In a klick his optics widened, his servo fell from her face, and he stepped backwards as if she was a hissing Scraplet. All discomfort in her body ceased, and she felt as if she'd been doused in freezing oil. She blinked rapidly, and he seemed... surprised. Shocked, even. His mouth was in a confused frown, and he kept glancing between Elita and his hand.

"Yours... your optics are different," he said quietly, as if to no-one. "There is no sin or shame in them... you are still pure..."

Long klicks past with Elita's own confusion growing in each of them until he shook his helm and the grim scowl returned.

"But still a harlot, nonetheless."

He whirled away from her and marched back to his desk, snatching a cloth and wiping down the blade of the sword.

"Turning left at the end of the main hallway will take you to the entrance," he advised. "I suggest you do so quickly." He didn't look around to watch her leave, though he heard the thud of the door closing.


	7. Chapter 7

Elita's spark was threatening to spill from her mouth with the weight of her frantic ventilations, and the stagnant cool air of the passageway did little to sate the numb tingling in her circuits. Soundwave may have moved beautifully, but his vocaliser was foul as a Wrecker's. His words still stung and rattled in her audios, no matter how hard she tried to clear them out.

'_Harlot...' _Femmes in her situation had many names, and most much more unpleasant than Soundwave's own choice, but... something about his tone, his snarl that tore his words to pieces before they left his vocaliser, echoed loud in her processor and settled in her spark. It bloomed and pulsed like something cancerous, filled with grim truth.

What if he was right?

"There you are!" Starscream's screech pierced her thoughts and forced her attention away from Soundwave. Without even noticing she had been retracing her steps through the corridor and back into the hushed bustle of the main entrance. Starscream was marching towards her with enough force in his peds to rival that of a triple changer. "Where on Cybertron have you been?!"

Elita's glossa clicked as it tried to form an excuse. "I... I got lost." Her apologetic smile was as innocent as she could make it, and as she expected Starscream didn't question her any further.

"Typical. Praxus bots would lose their helms if they weren't riveted to their chestplates." When his optics finished rolling his usual smirk spread again like spilt oil, plastered obscenely on his faceplate. "Well, if you have all you require, then we can go on to-"

Strangely enough, it was Thundercracker who saved her.

"Starscream." The blue Seeker appeared between them, again ignoring Elita herself. "Your presence has been requested in Iacon. And by requested, I mean I will drag you down there by your wings if I have to."

The Senator's wings practically fluttered with his frustration. "Oh, for Primus' sake..." He pressed a hand of claws into his forehead, groaning loudly. "My only political duty for the evening was accompanying Senator Ratbat. What is so important that it can't wait until the morning?"

"Something tells me you'll be interested in this, brother." A small smirk was betraying Thundercracker's otherwise stoic expression. "It involves our benevolent Senator Shockwave."

Starscream's hand fell from his faceplate, revealing a curious glint in his optics and a poisonous grin below them.

"I see..." He turned to face Elita again, bowing with his wings curving down. "In that case, I'm afraid must bid you farewell now, my dear." She tried not to cringe as his lips pressed against her hand. "I will have one of my shuttles take you back to Praxus, to ensure your safety. Let your superior know that her payment will be delivered to her before Shaula rises."

"I shall, Senator. Thank you for... an enlightening evening." It was the most honest thing she'd said all that evening.

**xx**

Elita barely set a ped inside Cyberos' lodging section before Chromia ambushed her with questions (as well as literally ambushing her from behind a doorway).

"So, how'd it go?" She was still recovering from her near-spark attack while the blue femme's optics glimmered mischievously.

"You couldn't have waited until I gave my report to Beta?" C

Chromia only shrugged in her half-sparked way, optics still alive. "You still haven't answered me."

"It was fine, okay?" She tried to move past her friend, but her efforts were vain as Chromia kept blocking her.

"Your tone seriously suggests otherwise."

A groan rattled past Elita's vocaliser. "I'm... I'm just tired, Chromia." Elita didn't have to fake the strain in her voice- Starscream alone would have been enough to fry her circuits but Soundwave all but drained her. "All I want to do is get my debrief over with and go to my berth."

Chromia's optics lost their sparkle, concern wrought in the small wrinkles on her faceplate. "Was it really that bad?"

Elita's second groan was full of regret as her shoulders slumped forwards and her helm turned down. "Starscream is the most pompous, egotistical aft of a mech I've ever met."

"Told 'ya."

"I feel like I need an oil bath after being next to him so long. Even worse, he took me to Kaon, to one of the gladiator pits. It was some sort of political public image thing, and it was... intense. I watched a mech _die." _She couldn't stop her vocaliser from cracking while a stream of Blackout's energon erupted across her optics in a flash of memory.

"Sounds... pretty brutal." Chromia's optics and voice were strangely soft at her friend's distress; Elita knew she would have barely flinched if she stood in a whole puddle of someone's spilt energon. "You sure you're alright, 'Lita?"

"That wasn't the worst part," Elita said with a sigh, crossing her servos. "The gladiator that survived... Soundwave, he called himself. I ran into him afterwards... he knew I was from the Art caste. And he was angry. Really... really angry. "

"Sounds like Star wasn't the biggest aft of the evening after all." Chromia's lip curled in disdain. "What got his energon boiling so much?"

"Everything, anything, I don't know. Mostly me. I did... kind of barge into his private room."

Chromia's expression fluctuated somewhere between confusion and deadpan. "I'm not one to judge, Elita, but that doesn't sound like the best way to impress a mech."

"It was an accident!"

"An accident that almost made you into that guy's target practice!"

"I know, I know." Elita rolled her optics. "But 'Mia, you should have seen him _fight_." Awe bloomed suddenly in her voice like a newborn supernova, all embarrassment left far behind. "It was _gorgeous_, like... like watching the best of all of us fused into one mech." Even that was inadequate to describe how she felt being witness to his performance.

Chromia's only note of emotion was the scepticism in her raised eyeridge. "I've heard gladiators called many things, but I'm sure 'gorgeous' isn't one of them."

'_I can think of __**one **__you'd call that,' _Elita couldn't stop from thinking. Ever since returning from her first assignment Chromia rarely went a day without mentioning Ironhide, the bodyguard mech she met on her first assignment (accompanying the racer Blurr to a celebration at The Circle. The mech only had her for the evening, but Ironhide impressed her enough to keep her coming). From her words Ironhide was a former gladiator himself, handpicked and taken from the pits to protect his ward.

She wondered if Soundwave had any association with him. If he had any friends he had to kill for hollow crowd cheers.

"Anyway, haven't you already got a mech to be admiring? That mech you told me about in training."

"Orion..." A tidal wave of emotions washed over her as his name left her glossa. Sadness and loss reigned chief among them, flooding her spark like lava. The mech she had spent the first years of her live with, who had treated her like a high caste noble and pressed his lips so softly against hers...

Elita almost choked on the hard lump of nostalgia in her vocaliser. "Yeah, but it's not like I'm ever going to see him again soon." She'd come to know that fact intimately from the moment their castes were assigned. "He's in Iacon, pouring over dusty old datapads..."

"And we're all stuck here, pouring high-grade and polishing our armour every night," Chromia finished for her. "Who knows, maybe Orion won't even recognise you if you do meet him."

"That's really not helping, 'Mia."

"I never claimed to be helpful."

"Look, I really should go, Beta'll be sending a drone out if I don't get a move on." Chromia was surprised enough at Elita's abrupt change in tone that she neglected to stop her from slipping underneath her arm and hurrying along to her superior's office. Her servos clutched tight around her chest to keep her spark from leaping free of its chamber.

**xx**

**_Note: _**_'Shaula' is the second brightest star in the Scorpius constellation and the star that Cybertron orbits in IDW. This is a small detail, but readers of Promise will know it to be quite significant concerning the name of the sparkling in that story. _


	8. Chapter 8

Elita's berth chamber was colder than usual that night. Her ventilations were frosty clouds in the air, twirling upwards in the shaft of light from Luna-1 streaming through her window. Even with it closed she still shivered.

Her exchange with Beta was almost as cold; a curt report that she barely seemed to be listening to as she tapped her pen on a datapad on her desk. Elita didn't mention her meeting with Soundwave, or her exchange with Ratbat. When she was finished Beta nodded, still looking down at the pad, and reached down to rummage in a drawer. She pressed a few credit slips into Elita's hand and said no more to her, leaving her to dismiss herself.

The slips felt foreign in her grip as she stood in the vacant hallway just outside her room. Every apprentice femme was given a small allowance of credits every lunar cycle to spend as she wished (though most of it was spent on armour polish and replacing peds worn down to metal shavings), but that stopped once she began getting clients. Then she'd be earning the money herself (and even then the one in charge of her escort house still received a large percentage of her profits).

Elita wondered how much her virginity would end up being worth just before shoving past the door and throwing them down on the table underneath the window, unable to look any longer at them. The light overhead _plinked _off when she slapped the switch beside the door, drowning everything in sterile darkness. Every step she took towards her berth threatened to freeze her to the floor, but she managed to fall onto its yielding surface with a sigh. She curled into a ball in a desperate attempt to conserve body warmth. It must have worked, or the ordeal of the evening had completely drained her, as she was fast asleep klicks later.

However, recharge gave her no sanctuary from her own processor.

Her room faded and her mind went numb as shadow wings unfurled like an intricate ink stain across her field of dreaming. It was drying into a harsh blot that seemed to flinch against a soft red glow from somewhere unknown. Even with her primary consciousness disabled she recognised Starscream's shape as it emerged through a ripple of obsidian, a sneer making his faceplate even uglier than usual.

"_Survival... harlot..." _His sneer didn't move but his voice still echoed, rasping like sandpaper against a lillith corpse and destroying the illusion of silence. Purple flashed across his face and Ratbat's replaced it, with something ugly twisting his expression into one of contempt. It didn't suit him at all.

"_Still a harlot." _The beast fangs that crested his faceplate almost snarled as he spat the ghostly words out. His cape was frozen in a demonic shape of wings that somehow managed to be worse than those of genuine Seekers. The insult echoed around her, layers upon layers of baritone hatred. But even with the deafening din Soundwave's hiss was obvious beneath it all. And the red glow... so similar to that of his optics...

Cold coolant drenched her when she gasped awake, hands clenched in fists over her spark. The moonlight was gone now, everything in true darkness. Even her biolights were weak under the weight of the blackness.

She stayed still, statuesque and shaking until Shaula's rays through her window marked the new day ahead.

**xx**

"Well, you look like you just slept in a turbofox cage."

Elita didn't bother replying to Chromia's quip as she sank into her seat, cradling her morning ration of energon (at least that was one thing she still got free of charge) close to her spark and hitting her heavy helm back against the common room wall.

"Bad dreams," she sighed. "I had... pretty bad dreams."

"You wanna talk about them?" Chromia had already finished her ration, the cyan dregs collecting at the bottom of her tilted glass.

Elita looked down for a moment, and took a long gulp from her own glass. "I saw wings," she began. "Silhouettes of wings, at least. It was dark, all black and shadows. Apart from red. This... piercing glow of red that I saw everywhere. I recognised it. It was his optics... Soundwave's optics."

"That was all?"  
"No. He was talking." A digit scratched at Elita's cheek, optics wandering as she remembered. "The same things he told me yesterday. Starscream was there too. And Ratbat. They were all saying it..."

"Sounds like a memory leak." Chromia shrugged as if it really _was _that simple. "You should get Minerva to check it out-"

"I want to see him again, Mia."

"What?!" Energon droplets splashed on the floor as she shot to her peds, empty glass forgotten in her grip. Flareup glanced at her over the top of her magazine, and more than a few curious optics pointed in her direction. "Is your processor glitching out, 'Lita?"

"From what I saw last night, maybe," Elita muttered, crossing her servos over her chest. "But I know this is something I want to do. That I _need _to."

"Hun, what you _need _is a day's rest and some good old fashioned anti-Seeker propaganda. It's very calming, trust me."

"You know I don't like it when you call me 'hun'." Elita didn't scowl often, but when she did it was sour enough to curdle industrial energon. What was left in her glass practically bubbled when her lips curved down into one.

"It's just a habit, okay?" Chromia said her defence, throwing her servos up. "And _I _don't like it when my friends go out into near-certain danger."

"Says the one who had her first date with Ironhide in a closed-down refinery factory?" Elita pointed out, recalling the scorch marks that took three solar cycles to buff out completely.

"I'll have you know, almost all the incinerators had burned out by then. And the lava pools weren't that deep anyway." Elita rolled her optics and slipped a hand into her subspace, digging for the treats Ratbat had gifted to her.

Chromia raised an eyeridge and tilted her helm when she pulled them out. "What's that?"

"Energel. Senator Ratbat gave them to me." She held the package out to let her take a cube, almost laughing at her grimace as it stuck like goo to her digits. Her expression softed as she popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly at first but then rolling her glossa everywhere to absorb as much flavour as possible.

"I like it. Any mech you should be seeing, it's that Senator guy. I could do with more of these."

"How about I _tell _you I'm going to see him instead, and you tell me how to get to Kaon?"

The treat must have sweetened Chromia's personality as well as her glossa, because she actually complied (or she just liked showing off her travel route knowledge). "Praxus Pod Central to Vos, then get another one to Kaon from there. And you would have gotten a shuttle pass with your first payment, so-"

"Wait, what?" Elita unfolded her servos and leaned forward on her seat, a baffled look overtaking her determination.

"You know, the card that lets you get shuttles for free? So you can get back here if you get ditch- I shouldn't have said anything, should I?" she thought out loud just as Elita raced out of the room back to her chamber.


End file.
